


Moses Turned Away

by EugenidesofEddis



Category: The Prince of Egypt (1998)
Genre: Family, Gen, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-09 00:03:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1961283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EugenidesofEddis/pseuds/EugenidesofEddis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moses loves his family more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moses Turned Away

Moses loves his life. His parents, his brother, his home; it is all he ever wanted. His encounter with the slave woman goes against everything he knows to be his life. Her lies follow him, night and day. Of course they are lies. Who ever heard something as absurd as a Hebrew slave being raised as Pharaoh's own son? If Moses were a cruel or vengeful man, he would have her punished or killed. Instead he broods. He broods until he must know. The sound of the torch dropping to the stone floor is far away as he stands before the record of the slaughter done on his father's orders. No. Not his father's orders. Pharaoh's orders. Because if the slave woman's words are true then this man is not his father. This man he has looked up to all his life, the only father he has ever known is…not. Then by the will of the gods, Pharaoh is there with him, embracing him. His words echo in Moses' head. Only slaves. Only slaves.

They are not only slaves as he walks past them bent double with the loads on their backs. They are uncles, cousins, nephews. His own blood. Any of them could be his father. Were they not human? Did no one notice that they were? Rameses tells him he is being ridiculous, that he cannot see why it matters to him so much. He says that he has always known where Moses has come from and that it made no difference. His mother comforts him in the way that she always has, and he realizes that he himself has not changed. He is still the same person he was before he'd met the slave woman. He is a sovereign prince of Egypt, a son of the proud history that lay in every stone of his father's empire. He was never destined to be a slave; the gods chose him, gave him his life for a reason.

The slaves haunt him. Moses feels for the Hebrew slaves, and they never fail to remind him who he might be but for the will of the gods. The guilt stabs like a knife and stops the breath in his chest. Even so, when Moses sees the whip crack across an old man's back as Rameses talks of his great plans, he turns away. He could have done something, then. But he will do something, later. Quietly and beneath the notice of all but those he helps. He feels guilty for their plight, unspeakably so. And perhaps he does feel more than a small amount responsibility for the suffering of these people who worship some lone god. It does not, _cannot,_ matter.

Moses loves his family more.


End file.
